You Can Now Register to Vote With a Text Message (So You Really Have No Excuse Not To)

Here's some math for you: We're less than 50 days away from the 2016 election. Thirty-three percent of the country's eligible voters are not registered to vote. Americans spend approximately 23 hours a week online and/or texting. So, what do you do when a critical election is drawing closer, but a third of the eligible—and highly mobile-connected—voter population remains unregistered? You create a tool that allows them to register directly from the comfort of their phone.

That's the idea behind HelloVote, a new, non-profit tool that makes voter registration as effortless as possible. Simply log onto hello.vote to get started via text or Facebook messenger, or, if you want to begin the process directly, send a message to the texting shortcut at 384387. Once contact is initiated with the HelloVote messenger bot, you'll be asked a series of questions that correlate with the voter registration in your home state. How does HelloVote know what questions to ask? Co-founders Tiffiniy Cheng and Elana Berkowitz spent years conducting research and developing a product that incorporates all 50 states—and all 50 voter registration forms.

Once you enter information about your current home address, HelloVote will then continue your application process as it complies with your state's form (for instance, if you're a resident of a state that requires the last four digits of your social security number when you register, it will ask for them; if not, it won't). Once the HelloVote bot has guided you through the registration form and you've answered all the necessary questions, the whole application process is complete and you're registered to vote. Even better? It takes only about a minute to do so. And since this data is all highly personal (and highly sensitive) HelloVote was developed to keep that information encrypted.

Voter registration over Facebook messenger is just a simple conversation using HelloVote.

"The voter registration process [can be] so complicated and there are so many state rules," Tiffiniy Cheng, one of HelloVote's co-founders, told Glamour. "Part of what we’re doing is removing some of that guess work and guiding people through the process with really simple text messages, based on the 50 states' rules and regulations. Taking out that guess work is actually taking out a huge barrier that can get someone to register to vote."

But what if I'm in a state that only offers paper-based applications?, you might be wondering. (For reference: 31 states, as well as Washington, D.C., currently offer online registration; the remaining states have kept the paper precedent in place.) If you are not a resident of one of the states that offers an online app, don't fret: After you go through the application process with the chat bot, HelloVote will send you your pre-completed form by either email or, if you're sans-printer, regular mail, along with a pre-addressed stamped envelope. From there, all you have to do is sign your form and drop it in a mailbox.

And for any nay-sayers who may cry "voter fraud!" at the prospect of registering to vote online, HelloVote was developed to recognize fake information and reject it (so if you're address and zip don't line up, or if your social is incorrect, HelloVote won't register the bogus info). The bot also offers plenty of notifications that inform would-be voter frauds that falsifying a registration form is a criminal offense. Not to mention, the rate of voter fraud in the United States is basically zero—there’s a higher rate of UFO sightings than instances of voter fraud—which means the argument against digital registration is basically meaningless.

You can also register to vote with a series text message sent by HelloVote.

"If you're not registered to vote in the first place, there are a lot of ways to take action that are blocked off from you," said co-founder Elana Berkowitz. "So we wanted to make sure as many people as possible could take this first step [and register]. Millennials are spending a lot of their time online—and most of them are doing it via their mobile devices. [We asked,] How can we can create the easiest experiences for mobile readers as they’re getting ready to register to vote?"

Cheng and Berkowitz have known each other since they were freshmen in college (they went to separate universities but met through mutual friends), and have spent most of their post-grad professional lives developing technologies that better people's lives. Cheng is the co-founder and co-director of Fight for the Future, a non-profit that focuses on protecting the power of the Internet and using it to do good in the world. Berkowitz runs her own technology consulting firm and spent two years developing tech policy and projects with the Obama administration. They began working on integrating online forms into the registration process back in 2012 (in hope of making that election cycle more digital-friendly for eligible voters), but their work really took off in March of 2016 when they began working with a team of developers to launch HelloVote.

The project has drawn the attention of some big names, and they've partnered with brands like Rock the Vote, MTV, NextGen Climate, Presente, Latino Victory, SEIU, and Genius ahead of HelloVote's launch.

"Text messages have about a 98 percent open rate, compared to 20 percent via email," Cheng said. "This tool has the potential to make the difference between someone who actually registers to vote because they can text rather than someone who just doesn’t. I think that’s going to be a game-changing piece this election."